By: MarkJ - 20 August, 2010 (8:31 AM) - Score: 6096 - Video

Arqiva's largely free UK broadband internet TV and video-on-demand website, SeeSaw, has signed a major new multi-year licensing agreement with NBC Universal that will bring popular USA programmes (e.g. "Heroes", "House", "Battlestar Galactica", "The Office" and "30 Rock") to the service. Existing partners include the BBC, Channel 4, Channel FIVE, MTV and Disney.

SeeSaw, which currently offers 3,500 hours of free archive and catch-up programming and over 1,500 hours of rental content, will offer episodes of the new TV shows to broadband ISP visitors from just 99p; a full series is expected to cost from £3.99-£17.99.

The service itself is based off technology that was purchased from the defunct Project Kangaroo, which was originally a joint broadband Internet TV (IPTV) service venture between the BBC, ITV and Channel 4. However Project Kangaroo ended up being scrapped after the Competition Commission (CC) ruled it to be anti-competitive. Now we have Project Canvas instead.


Annoyingly customers will not be able to save the content, only gaining rental style access for up to 30 days (episodes) and series for up to 90 days. That could make it quite expensive, especially considering that some of the shows (e.g. "Battlestar Galactica") have now ended and are quite cheap to buy on DVD. We also note that each episode must be watched within 48 hours of starting it.

Customers hoping to view the content will need to make sure that their website browser supports Adobe Flash Player 10 and that their internet connection can sustain a minimum broadband ISP speed of 1Mbps. SeeSaw partly funds itself by forcing you to watch an un-skippable 1 minute advertisement both before and during (halfway through) each show.